In a monitoring camera system which includes a monitoring camera and a video recording apparatus configured to record video information from the monitoring camera, recording operation includes: alarm recording which starts to record video information when an intruder is detected; and prerecording which always records video information in a recording medium such as a memory and which stores video information recorded in the recording medium as a pre-alarm record when an alarm is generated.
In the case of prerecording, for a prerecording time, a given time set in advance is generally used, but the prerecording time may be changed depending on the type of alarm. For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a stored motion image selection device. The stored motion image selection device selectively stores, for a long term, motion image data of a partial range of the motion image including a portion prior to a trigger when the trigger is detected. The trigger is a trigger for storing, for a long term, a part of the motion image data which is obtained by capturing a predetermined scene and which is temporarily stored. The stored motion image selection device includes: a separation setting storage unit which stores a separation condition as a candidate of the range of motion image data for long term storage for each type of trigger in advance; a trigger type discrimination unit which discriminates the type of the detected trigger; and a separation selection unit which selects the separation including the trigger based on the discriminated type of the trigger with reference to the separation setting storage unit and which sends motion image data for the selected separation to a long-term storage memory. In the stored motion image selection device, the type of a trigger is substantially the same as the type of alarm.